Teddy Armada
by Cogito Ergo Fcked
Summary: Krei Tech, or what was left of it after the Callaghan incident, offers something that Hiro can't possibly deny. Artificial Intelligence, bio-mechanics, and gummy bears come together to bring back what he once thought he would never meet again. Theoretically... (heavy science, Rated T for iffy language)
1. Chapter 1: the proposal

To: Hiro Hamada (hiromada98 (a) sfit .edu )

From: Alistair Krei (AKrei (a) kreitech. com)

Subject: proposition-cum-apology, or the best I can do to make it up to you

* * *

Hello, Hiro. I hope you're doing okay these days...Abigail Callaghan certainly seems to. She hasn't spoken to me for two weeks now, but I hear that she's up and running just fine, ha ha. I just wanted to

Agh. No..that's not..that's not what I wanted to say...Okay, I'll just start over, without the 10-year-habit of corporate hypocrisy and flattery.

I'm sorry, I'm the one that started everything. If I hadn't let my greed and excitement cloud my logic, Abigail would've been safe, Callaghan wouldn't have let Tadashi die, none of this tragedy would've happened. I passionately wish that I could turn back the clock, go back to that moment and that past version of myself, yell in his face to 'grow up and start thinking about the horde of shit that you're going to commit before the words are out of your mouth and it actually happens'...I can never forgive that version of myself.

But a worm of thought has gradually eaten its way through my head for the last couple of weeks, and it says, "There _might _be a way. A way to, maybe not to redeem your pitiful self completely, but a _little _bit, if possible...There might be..." And the reason it says that is this:

Krei Tech is, as you know, a very large company, dealing with a very broad range of technology, in almost every field. Although the preeminent genre of our song is computers and electronics, there ar a number of styles that the composer, i.e. me, slipped in, for the able ear to notice. We have R&amp;D in over 20 different categories, from robotics (which lags far behind Baymax, sadly) to biological statistics. Out of these, one of the more elusive teams are working on bio-mechanical robotics, and their progress is surprisingly fast. Give or take a half-dozen months, they could have a perfect recreation of the human body, made of silicon and titanium alloy. But they're a bit stumped on something unexpected: software. They can't put a period on the designs because they have absolutely no idea of how the hell it's going to be controlled. I've personally been concerned about their problem for a while now. So, still in pursuit of profit as blindly as ever, my mind put together a crazy idea. What the perfect ending to the recent fiasco would've been was if the boy's brother was alive, whether it turns out he miraculously survived that horrible fire, or Buddhism prevails and death has a feedback loop to life, et cetera. But these seem too slim a chance to be satisfactory. How about this instead? We put the bio-mech team to work on this ideal epilogue. _We, Krei Tech, _bring Tadashi back to life.

All that they need is your go, no go. And your cooperation in writing the inside, the soul for his body. _His _soul, and because it is, one that only _you_ can write.

A wise man once said, _'__ego cogito, ergo sum.'_; Latin for '_I think, therefore I exist'._ You could prove him wrong. You could update it to _'__ego **memento**, ergo sum.'; 'I am remembered, therefore I exist.' _You, and Tadashi.

I hate to be proposing to you again, after what happened the last time, but it's the only way I'll remotely forgive myself. I won't blame you for refusing, though. I will know that you are smarter than _this_ man.

yours humbly,

Alistair Krei


	2. Chapter 2: The Assent

"Hiro, c'mon, time to get up, lazybones."

Hiro grumbled unintelligibly and burrowed deeper into his blankets. Tadashi pouted and pushed him.

"You really think you can recreate me with that level of enthusiasm? Unbelievable. I can't imagine why on earth Krei ever could have thought you could do it."

Hiro frowned and mumbled, "You're supposed to be dead, dammit. Go away and let me sleep..."

Tadashi fell silent. After a moment, Hiro sat up slowly and looked him hard in the eyes.

"Hey. I'm not going to do it. End of story. I have my friends, i have Aunt Cass, I have SFIT, I have Baymax. We're helping a lot of people, just like you wanted. And don't get me the wrong way, it's not that I don't want you back...," He sighed and looked down for a moment before smiling up at his brother. "I just need to let you go, y'know? I can't let myself just become...well... obsessed with getting you back and, just, chuck everything else out the window." Then he grinned and punched Tadashi, adding, "Anyway, your stupid robotic nurse wouldn't let me. Not for all the little plastic toys in China."

Their surroundings flickered and changed from their bedroom to the SFIT convention center, mere minutes before the fire, when Krei approached him. Krei stood where Tadashi had been a secodnd before. He frowned ever so slightly at him and said, "I...thought you were smarter than that."

Krei adjusted his cufflink and walked away, his secretary casting Hro a sharp glance before following. The surrounding crowd mirrored his movements and shifted away from Hiro in a single smooth motion. It was only after he was left completely alone that Hiro realized they had all looked like Tadashi. For a moment, everything was silent. Then, from the distance, he heard the high-pitched buzzing of a fire alarm, and his heart stopped for a moment. He ran towards the sound, a feeling of dread welling up inside him.

An enormous wall of raging inferno stood before stretched on forever to both directions, amorphous and infinite. to He could feel its heat slam into him as he rammed to an abrupt halt. He stood there, agape with horror, then regained his wits and tried to leap in. But a firm grip pulled him back, and a voice cried, "Hiro, no!"

He looked back to face Aunt Cass, her face full of horror. Behind her, his friends came running, shouting and calling his name. The fire roared furiously behind his back with unbelievable force, and he looked back to it before saying to Aunt Cass, "Tadashi's in there. I have to help."

He evaded her despairing gaze and squeezed her hand reassuringly before letting go and running into the flames. The heat was even more intense, and he began to sweat profusely. He opened his mouth to call his name, but the smoke and heat choked him, and he coughed several times before managing to shout, "Tadashi? Tadashi! Where are you!"

He searched everywhere, coughing, sweating, burning himself more than once, and he was so sure that the silhouette right there was Tadashi, but when he reached it, it faded in a cascade of flames, and he turned around to see another distant figure through the forest of fire, wavering in the hot air, there, that's him! and then he'd make his way to it only to find nothing but flames, flames, flames.

He searched for minutes, hours, days, maybe even years, but everything was aflame, and nothing was real.

Then he saw Baymax.

The pale mass of inflated vinyl waddled over to him, and as he came closer, the flames faded into darkness. Hiro stood there, suddenly discovering that he was so utterly exhausted, he couldn't lift a finger at gunpoint. Baymax stopped in front of him. Everything was silent as death.

Hiro looked up wearily. "Baymax...Where's Tadashi? I think he was in the fire. Yeah, he was in the fire somewhere...I need to find him, Baymax...d'you know where he is?"

Baymax pointed straight forward, a round finger pointing straight at Hiro's face. "Tadashi is here."

Hiro let out an exasperated breath. "No, not that...I mean, he was in the fire, Baymax. He's around here somewhere..."

Baymax repeated himself. "Tadashi is here."

Hiro gripped his head in frustration and opened his mouth to reply, then froze. His hand slowly felt the black baseball cap on his head, then took it off to hold it before his unbelieving eyes.

It was Tadashi's cap. He looked up at Baymax, unable to speak. Baymax withdrew his finger, looked down at him, and said, "I am now displaying my camera input on my main display." The robot's chest lit up.

He stared. In the screen, Tadashi stared back with a shocked expression on his scorched, charred face. He raised his hand to touch it, and his fingertips were illuminated faintly from the display. On it, Tadashi mirrored his movement, and their hands touched.

"Tadashi is _here_..." He whispered faintly. Then he woke up from the dream.

* * *

"You told him _what?!_" Gogo shouted, then launched into an outbreak of angry Korean profanity. Her friends chimed in, interrupting each other and being generally chaotic and excited.

"Tadashi-"

"Biosynthetics-"

"Hiro-"

"My god-"

Krei fliched back from the furious onslaught of nerds. "I wasn't...I thought-"

"No, sir, you don't call that kind of stupidity 'thinking'," Wasabi cut him off. He took off his safety goggles angrily, then added, "Not even for somebody like you!"

"That really was thoughtless of you," Honey added.

"Yeah, what if Tadashi decides to be a superhero? Like me?" chided Fred, with a calculating frown. "He won't have a color left for his uniform! I mean, Wasabi's green, Gogo's yellow, Honey's pink - "

Gogo cast him a venomous glare, and he fell silent.

Krei said, "Okay, I admit, it is a very dangerous idea, of course it is! But look at it from my perspective; I'm ruined, shareholders are after my blood, the only thing I have left is a smoldering pile of crap that was once the leading tech manufacturer on this planet and now is a worthless score of research teams!" He spread his hands in dismay. "I just want to do some good with the practically-nothing-at-all I have left."

Everyone was silent now. The only sound came from Wasabi's spare helium-neon laser, which hummed to itself quietly in the corner.

Then the door opened, and Hiro walked in. Baymax followed behind him, raised a finger and started to say amiably, "Hello, everyone. We've been listening to your-", but Hiro interrupted him.

"I want to do it."


End file.
